New Pathways to Achieving Scale Economies in the E-business Environment and the Development of Spatial Economics

摘要

The aim of this paper is to explore the possible ways in which e-business and the Internet may affect the pathways towards achieving scale economies and to make further discussions on the development of spatial economics. It is revealed in this paper that the widespread of e-business and the emergence of virtual organizations give new impetus to achieve scale economies in both supply-side and demand-side. For scale economies and increasing returns are fundamental incentives in spatial economics, the Internet-based e-business and the shifts in the pathways to achieving scale economies impose new effects on the mechanism of the geographical distribution of economic activities in the spatial economics. The new effective factors include economic integration in cyberspace, market-access effect, knowledge spillovers through network and declines in transaction costs, which are likely weaken the agglomeration forces.